


Traveling Woman

by rowofstars



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Dimension Travel, F/M, Post-Episode AU: s02e13 Doomsday, Pre-Episode: s04e13 Journey's End
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-08
Updated: 2010-08-08
Packaged: 2018-04-25 12:05:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4959961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rowofstars/pseuds/rowofstars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hang on traveling woman. Don't sacrifice your plan. Rose travels and tries to find the Doctor. Her Doctor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Traveling Woman

**Author's Note:**

> For my darling Deborah on her birthday. Inspired by a line from her fic [The End is Where We Begin](http://momentmusical.livejournal.com/16497.html), which is quoted below. ILU, bb. ♥

_These things, plaintive and deep rooted, must carry across incarnations; those strange, cataclysmic intersections of love and hope and desire and fear._ \- The End is Where We Begin by [](http://momentmusical.livejournal.com/profile)[**momentmusical**](http://momentmusical.livejournal.com/)

 

 

 

 

 

What you should know by now is that time is not a straight line.

It is not a circle, a sphere, or a dodecahedron. There is no point A or point B.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s raining.

Her boots pound against the pavement, splattering the frigid water up her calves where bits of tar and rainbow slicks of oil stain her jeans. She trips up a curb and runs headlong into a chain link fence, wrapping her fingers through the holes and using it to hold herself up until her breathing slows. Turning, she stumbles off the curb, and wipes a hand over her forehead. The lamp is out at this end of the parking lot and she stares into the heavy darkness, turning around and around.

The faint groan of the universe unzipping echoes in her ears as a rush of air swirls around her, pushing damp hair into her eyes where it sticks to her eyelashes.

She blinks, the burn of unshed tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. Days, hours, seconds, it doesn’t matter. All that does is that she is once again too late. Her shaky fingers find the small metal disc in her pocket, fumbling over it until the button pokes into her palm.

She presses down on it and the world blurs, becomes almost translucent, and there are places where the walls are so thin she can see through them, see a busy London street on a sunny afternoon, a happy couple careening around a corner on a Vespa in Rome. Everything stretches, tight like a rubber band, and she can feel her joints pop and crack with the tension, energy stored up in the sinewy strands of muscle. It pulls and pulls until a white hot pain shoots through her, like the universe has her strung up on a rack, cruelly twisting the ropes until she gives up her secrets.

There’s a flash of warm yellow light, and a moment of stillness right before time catches up to itself. It’s dark and quiet, eerily still, and it takes a moment before she realizes she can’t even hear the beat of her own heart. She blinks again but the tears don’t fall. There is no gravity to make them fall, no friction to make them cling to her cheeks. A gasping sob dies in her throat.

There is no air.

The Void recoils, vibrates and rolls with the suddenness of her intrusion, spitting her out on the other side. She lands on her feet on a dirt road and falls to her knees, coughing at the dust that billows up around her.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Her worn white trainers scuff along the pavement, the crunch of autumn leaves loud in her ears and mixing with the ever present melody of civilization. The air is comfortably cool and smells like rain. She takes a deep breath and looks around, frowning curiously at a man in an old military coat, RAF she thinks, standing on the other side of the street.

For a second she feels like he’s staring at her, and she stops, their eyes meeting across a stretch of asphalt. Then he looks away and something in her chest tightens, almost aches. A taxi passes between them, the rush of air pushing strings of blonde hair in her face. She catches them with her fingers and pulls them away, tucking them behind her ear.

When she looks again, he is gone.

Mickey zips by her, tossing a smile over his shoulder and peddling furiously. She sighs and shakes her head. It seems like the park gets further and further away from the estate every day, or maybe it’s that she always remembers it being closer. She looks up and sees the glint of sunlight shining off the red reflector on the back of Mickey’s bicycle.

It’s blue and a ten speed. Mickey got one four years ago for his eleventh birthday. She turned eleven last week and she’s _still_ walking to the park. The wind picks up and she pulls her jacket tighter around her, tucking her hands inside the sleeves. Mickey disappears around the corner and she sighs, kicking a ragged hunk of concrete with the toe of her shoe.

She _wants_ a bicycle. She _needs_ new shoes. She’ll get neither.

The man watches her shuffle her way down the pavement, her steps slowly draining of enthusiasm before she rounds the corner and slips out of sight. The stiff breeze presses the heavy wool coat around his knees as he turns and heads in the opposite direction, smiling to himself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The general glares at her, his yellow reptilian eyes glowing in the dim light. His tongue curls out the side of his mouth. She grins back at him, thumb hovering over the small red button, fingers wrapped tightly around the dimension disc. Clutching it between her breasts, she counts.

3…

2…

1…

She smashes the button down, dips her chin to her chest and slams her eyes shut. The intense heat of the explosion hits her an instant later, the shockwave knocking her backwards and off her feet. Her head cracks against something metal and the world goes black.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_You could come with me, if you want._

An offer hangs in the air between them, stretching into a moment, dangerous and tempting, and she wishes she was just brave enough to say yes. He leans to one side in the doorway of his strange blue box, looking at her expectantly, like he knows her heart’s deepest desire, until some nonsense about Mickey and the drab trappings of a human life tumble from her lips.

The echo of opportunity fades, the doors slip closed and a rush of air hits her as time exhales. Behind her, an anxious hand squeezes her shoulder, urging her to follow, to run back to the safety of home and chips and public transportation. She takes a step backwards, another, and then another, her eyes never leaving the empty space where her future once stood.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The platform rises up off the floor like an altar, metal steps leading the way up to a gap in the railing. Its red orange glow paints one end of the room room with a dull ominous light and she remembers the view from the underside of a black hole.

From the edge of the platform, she turns and looks through the glass partition at the room and the row of workstations manned by Torchwood’s finest minds. In the doorway beyond, Mickey stands with his arm around Jackie’s shoulders.

She looks down at her hand.

There’s a blue pill and a red pill.

Everything is cause and effect, choices and consequences, spilling out into infinity in perfect parallel lines and her future constricts to this pinpoint of a moment. She takes a step forward and a breath and the red pill.

Lines were meant to be crossed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

He’s the last person she expected to see in the last place she expected to be, but there is no mistaking that jacket and those ears, even at this distance. The street looks abandoned. Cars are parked haphazardly at the curb, some left running in the middle of the road, and there is a lingering odor she knows all too well. Her heart leaps and sinks all at once, knowing that while this is so right, it is also very wrong.

Just as she is about to leave, he turns around. “Rose,” he breathes, and she can feel the relief, the elation, and the astonishment coming off of him in waves. He takes a step, then another, and then breaks into a full run.

A moment later, he crashes into her, leather arms creaking as they wrap around her and lift her into the air. She gasps at the feel of him and the press of his wide manic smile against her neck. Her hands cling to his back and neck, brushing against his short cropped hair, and she wants so desperately to let herself have this moment.

“I thought I’d lost you,” he whispers, and she wonders briefly what must have happened in this shattered timeline of theirs to separate them. Then he sets her down gently, cupping her face in his palms.

“Doctor –,” is all she gets out before he’s kissing her, lips hard and insistent, tongue begging for entrance that she grants immediately.

As abruptly as he started, he stops. He looks down at her with the eyes of a dying man. “You’re not my Rose.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Somewhere a universe ends. Somewhere another one starts, quietly, violently, beautifully.

She steps over the space in between.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two words are all she whispers. Two words whose meaning he cannot mistake.

_Bad. Wolf._

The end is coming, a message to lead her to him again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She sees the future dressed as a stranger.

The box is blue, the girl is ginger, and he’s traded pinstripes for a bow tie. The way he brushes his hand through the mop of hair hanging over his forehead is at once strange and familiar.

She watches as he looks about, freezing when his gaze lands on her, tucked into the shadow of an alley between a bookstore and a chemist.

He blinks once and turns to his companion. “Time to go, Pond.”

Then he spins on his heel and whips open the TARDIS door, striding hastily inside. The girl lingers a moment, casting a furtive glance over her shoulder before following.

She shuts her eyes and looks away, pressing herself against the brick wall of the bookstore as they depart. When the dust settles, she wipes a hand over her eyes and reaches the other into her pocket.

A moment later she is gone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Her varnish chips as she scrapes her nails over the coffee table, snatching her keys from the midst of diet soda cans and scratch off lottery tickets. Her mum’s voice calls out something unintelligible as the door to her flat slaps shut behind her. Bounding down the stairway and out the side door of the estate building, she passes her old bicycle. The red paint is dull with age, but it shines in her mind as brilliantly as it did on that Christmas morning.

Sometimes she wonders why her mother looked just as surprised as she. Sometimes she wonders about the man with the sad eyes and dusty RAF coat. Sometimes she can almost remember his face.

Sometimes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She didn’t expect the sky to be so red.

She always imagined it black or gray, thick and heavy with ash that would blot out the sun. Her boots are hot, the rubber made too soft by the ground as it slowly liquefies. She picks her way over the rocky ground, hoping over the cracks and catching only a glimpse of the glowing orange bubbling up between them.

A hill that once must have seemed so small, dwarfed by the mountains surrounding the valley, is now the only high ground. She finds him there, standing stoically with his hands at his sides and his coat fluttering in the smoldering breeze, just staring out at the destruction. Moving beside him, she reaches out and slips her hand in his, feeling such relief at the way his fingers curve around hers.

Her head tilts, examining his profile in the burning red light. She doesn’t ask how they can be here like this, how they can watch the end of the world again from ring side seats, how they can be so wrong and still fit so right.

The sea is boiling when she finally speaks. “I have to go.”

He sighs. “I know.” His hand tightens over hers.

They’ll give themselves just a little while longer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Squinting in the bright fluorescent lighting, she stumbles off the raised platform and knocks her elbow against the safety railing. She hisses and swears under her breath, cupping the pointy bone in her palm. Her foot slips on the last step and she tumbles into Mickey’s waiting arms.

“Rose, are you okay?” he asks, the words coming out in a rush as he sets her right and gives her a quick once over, checking for injuries. “What happened?”

A thousand answers swirl in her mind.

_I missed him again. I found him again. I saved the Earth and I watched it burn with him holding my hand._

The world spins. Or maybe it is she who spins. It doesn’t matter. She’s learned it’s all just perspective.

Everything catches up in a flood, breaking over her mind and drowning her heart until she can barely breathe. Her knees slam against the cold white tile and Mickey barely keeps her nose from following suit.

“Whoa!” he exclaims, stumbling to kneel with her on the floor. “Rose? Rose!” His panicked hand cups her face, thumb sweeping over her cheek, fingers trailing down her jaw, her neck, pressing against the thin skin to feel for the thrum of her pulse.

“I saw him,” she mumbles.

Mickey stares at her. “Who?”

“The Doctor,” she breathes. “I saw – so many jumps –”

His eyes go wide. “Impossible,” he exhales, his breath ghosting over her face, sweet from all the sugar he puts in his tea.

She frowns.

“Rose,” he swallows. “That’s not possible. You – you’re hallucinating or something.” He turns his head towards the door and shouts to the agent standing guard. “Get Dr. Jones!”

“No!” she insists. “It worked. I found him.”

Her smile and the joy in her voice almost kill him. His eyes shut briefly and when he opens them she’s staring back at him, desperate and wild. “You didn’t find him,” he explains. “The machine didn’t work.”

She shakes her head and presses the heels of her palms against her eyes to shut out the sudden pain stabbing at her skull. She blinks. “ _Yes_ I did. I –” She looks from Mickey to the dimension cannon platform and back.

Mickey holds her gaze as the medical staff hurries in. “Rose, you never left this room.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_I create myself._

She sees everything. She knows everything. She is everything.

_I take the words. I scatter them in time and space._

His lips are so gentle, so careful, and as he takes the last of it from her, she can taste the bittersweet remains of time and the tang of cherry chapstick.

 

 

 

 

 

 

She falls.

She dies.

She wakes up in bed to the blare of an alarm clock at 7:30 in the morning, palm smacking against the plastic until it quiets. Sitting up, she blinks in the early morning light, rubbing sleep from her eyes futilely. She swings her legs over the edge of the bed and pushes herself to her feet with a sigh.

Wake up. Go to work. Eat chips. Sleep, rinse and repeat. This is her life. There are sale signs to post and t-shirts that won’t fold themselves.

She fidgets on the bus to work. Her mind itches. She is not mad, though she feels mad. She wants to run, to scream, to live in the moment and understand. Because there are pieces of herself she no longer understands, and a vague memory of a time when her life felt bigger on the inside.

But today is just another day.


End file.
